


Watching the Stars

by jeeno2



Series: Short Stories From the Vortex [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Kissing, Post Episode: s02e01 New Earth, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4461248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeeno2/pseuds/jeeno2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose wishes she could remember what kissing him had been like on New Earth.  The Doctor has other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> For captainisqueen on tumblr, who asked for a Doctor x Rose ficlet based on this prompt: "Imagine your OTP watching the stars. Person A tries to be romantic, telling person B they’re naming a star after them. Person B explains that it’s actually a planet, and gives a long scientific explanation on how to tell the difference."

Rose decides, one day, to just tell him the truth over tea.

Or part of the truth anyway.

“I want to go back to New Earth, Doctor.” Her mouth is full of toast when she says it, and she finds she can’t quite make eye contact with him across the table.  But she manages to get the words out, finally, after weeks of indecision. She figures that’s good enough.

Aside from trips home to see Mum they never go back to places they’ve been before.  It’s not something the Doctor’s ever expressly said they  _can’t_  do.  But Rose isn’t stupid, and after a year with him she knows that whatever his reasons might be, he never willingly visits the same place twice.  

As she’d expected, the Doctor’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise at her words.  Fortunately, he recovers quickly.

“What do you want to go back there for?” he asks quietly.   His voice sounds strange to her, like he’s working hard to keep the cadence even.   He picks up his teacup and blows on the steaming liquid to cool it.  Or, she muses, perhaps just for something to do with his hands.  This new, new doctor is a fidgeter.

“I just thought it might be nice, I guess.  Didn’t get a chance to properly enjoy it last time, did we?”   

Even as she says the words, images of the two of them lying together in a field of applegrass – of a kiss she can hardly remember but that still haunts her dreams – spin through her head.   

To Rose’s relief, if the Doctor is opposed to going back to New Earth, or if he’s guessed her real intentions, he doesn’t show it.  

“Very well,” he says, his voice back to its normal effervescence.  He runs his hands through his hair a few times before pushing back from his chair.  “We don’t have anywhere else to be right now anyway, do we?  I’ll set a course for New Earth right away.”

* * *

 

It’s nighttime on New Earth when they get there.

“They reopened that hospital, oh, about two years, maybe three, after we left? Give or take a few months,” he tells her when the TARDIS lands.  “It took the New New York government about that long to sort out all the red tape with those dodgy cat nuns.”

As soon as Rose opens the door, though, she can tell they aren’t anywhere near the hospital.  They’ve landed someplace rural from the looks of it.  It’s very quiet, with no ships or planes or even roads anywhere in sight.  The only sound that reaches her ears is the distant chirping of what she guesses might be crickets.   

She quickly decides their exact location doesn’t matter.  The grass in this field is just as fragrant and sweet as the applegrass in her memories, and the stars above them are beautiful, twinkling like diamonds in an ebony sea.

This will do fine.

Unlike last time, Rose thought to bring a blanket along.  She spreads it out on the grass in front of the TARDIS and lies down, folding her arms under her head to serve as a pillow.  

The Doctor wastes no time in joining her.  He takes off his trenchcoat and lies down next to her, less than six inches of space separating their bodies, his eyes fixed firmly on the stars above them.  

“C’mere, you,” he teases, pulling her close and enveloping her in his arms.  She rests her head on his chest, which is definitely a better pillow than her arms.  She closes her eyes and breathes deeply, relishing this tender moment of closeness, once a very rare thing between them but something that’s now happening with increasing frequency.

(She wonders if the Doctor craves it as much as she does, this sort of physical connection.  Then quickly dismisses the idea as ridiculous.)

After another quiet moment the Doctor lets out a long, contented sigh.   

“It’s nice here, isn’t it,” he says dreamily.

“Yes,” she murmurs into the lapel of his jacket.  He smells of spice and smoke and  _him_ , and it’s hard for her to think very clearly.  “It’s nice.”

“Mmmm.  Still,” he says.  He clears his throat meaningfully.  “I don’t  _really_  understand why you wanted to come back here, Rose Tyler.”

She stiffens in his arms.  When he agreed to bring her back here she’d hoped that meant he was satisfied with her half-explanation over tea.  She must have been wrong.  

“Umm.  Well.  I guess…. I dunno.  I just –”

“Because it’s not as though our last visit to New Earth was a laugh,” the Doctor continues as though she hadn’t spoken.  “We very nearly contracted every disease ever encountered by humankind.  And a good third of the time we were here you were possessed by that awful Cassandra.  Another third of the time, I was.”  

At first, Rose doesn’t say anything in response.  She waits quietly for him to continue, hoping that her talkative Doctor will eventually fill the silence with more words.  But when, after a long pause, it’s clear he doesn’t plan to say anything else, she realizes he’s waiting for her to answer him.  For a complete explanation as to why they’re here.

She takes a deep breath and steels her nerves.

“Doctor?”

“Mmm?”

“D’you ever have a thing – or, or a moment, I mean – that you want to remember, that you almost _can_  remember, but you can’t quite recollect all of it?  It’s like, right on the edge of your brain, just out of reach?”

The Doctor chuckles quietly.  Rose closes her eyes as she listens to the warm rumble of it beneath her ear.

“Not really, no,” he admits.  “I’ve got an exceptionally good memory, as you know.  But I’ve read enough human literature to have a vague understanding of what you’re getting at.”

Rose smiles, then takes another steadying breath before continuing.

“When somethin’ like that happens to me, if I go back to the place where the thing happened, it sometimes… I dunno.  Jogs my memory?  Makes it easier to remember the thing I’m wanting to remember.”

She bites her lip and closes her eyes, breathing deeply, willing the sweet smell of apple grass and the feeling of lying next to her Doctor on the ground of New New Earth to bring back to her all the details of that kiss that was never really hers in the first place.  Not just the shadowy outline of it – the breathlessness and excitement that came after – but all of it.  The feel of his lips crushed against hers, her hands in his hair, the way he must have felt, tasted, when her tongue darted out and slid indelicately along his bottom lip.  

Ever since it happened, that kiss Cassandra forced upon them both, the shape of the moment has been there, on the very fringes of her memory, taunting her to the point of near madness.  If there’s never to be anything more than friendship between her and the Doctor this shimmering half-memory of the kiss is not enough.  She wants the whole thing.  

Rose cannot tell the Doctor any of this.  But he nods a little all the same.  “I see,” he says, very quietly.  Rose cannot tell if he truly understands what she’s trying to say, or if he’s guessed the meaning behind her unspoken words.  Either way, she’s grateful that her half answer seems to have satisfied him for now.

She decides to change the subject before he has a chance to pry further.

“Look at all the stars here, Doctor,” she says.  She turns her head away from him and gazes upward, at the millions and billions of tiny little spots of light hung like miniature lanterns from thousands of light years away.  She wonders if they’ve been to any of them in their travels and, if so, which ones.

She turns her head and is about to ask him when she discovers he’s not looking at the stars at all.  He’s looking at her, the expression on his face serious and unreadable and one she’s never seen before.

Her heart stutters a little in her chest, the way he’s looking at her.

“Rose…” he begins.  He trails off and closes his eyes.  Shakes his head.

Terrified, suddenly, that the Doctor now understands why she brought them here – that he’s about to reject her, to explain why the kiss meant nothing to him and why she needs to forget about it – she tears her eyes away from him and looks back up at the sky.

Taking a page out of the Doctor’s book she begins to babble, just to fill the awkward gulf of silence stretching out between them.  

“Oh, Doctor – look at that one star over there,” she says, pointing, her voice shaking almost as badly as her outstretched arm.  “It’s so big and bright and shiny, isn’t it?”

“Rose –”

“Y’know, Doctor, that star is so big and bright and – it actually… kind of reminds me of you.”  She laughs a little, then.  Or tries to, anyway.  The noise that actually escapes her is more a strange hiccuping noise that sounds like crying.  “I just… I just can’t see anything else in the sky, really, with that star being in the middle right there.  I think… um.  I think I’ll call it ‘ _The Doctor Star_.’  After you.  What do you think?”  She cringes inwardly at her stupid suggestion.  At how awkward she’s suddenly made this entire situation.  

“It’s not a star, Rose.  It’s a planet,” the Doctor says, very quietly.  

“Errr… what, then?”  She chances another glance at him.  He’s still looking at her – has likely been looking at her throughout her entire daft speech.  And he’s smiling.

“It’s a planet,” he repeats.  “You see, New New Earth is rather unique in that there are fifty-eight planets in its solar system.  Most solar systems only have a third that number – if even that many.”  He nods a little before continuing.  “Because there are so many planets here that share the same star they’re all quite close together.  Well – relatively speaking, of course.  They’re so close together, in fact, that you can see most of the other planets in this solar system at any spot on New New Earth’s surface.  So long as you’ve found a dark enough night for star-gazing that is.”  

The Doctor takes her hand in his and gives it a gentle squeeze. His touch is at once thrilling and so familiar, his fingers brushing her palm in a way that stirs up a coiling sensation low in her abdomen. The warmth of his body is right there, next to her, radiating off of him in waves, and all she wants to do is let it consume her.

The Doctor slowly raises their joined hands up towards the sky and points at the “star” she just named after him.

He inclines his head towards her before speaking again.

“You can tell it’s a planet because of the rings,” he murmurs, his voice just barely above a whisper, tickling her ear.  “The brightness you’ve noticed is just what the rings look like from a million miles away.  Stars don’t have them.   Rings, that is.”  His voice trails off but he doesn’t move his head.  He leans even closer to her, until they’re touching, his forehead resting gently against the crook of her neck.

“Rose,” he says again.  A quiet whisper this time.  He presses a single, gentle kiss to the sensitive spot where her neck joins her shoulder, causing a shudder to run through her.

On instinct, she slowly turns her head so she’s looking at him.  

“I don’t want to remember that kiss,” he tells her, his eyes dark, their mouths less than an inch apart.  

“Oh,” Rose says, her stomach sinking, her heart knocking a painful, irregular beat inside her chest.  She tries to roll away from him - to protect herself; to put a respectable distance between them.  But he doesn’t let her.  As she starts to move away, he gently gathers her to him again.  

When she’s once again fully ensconced in his arms he presses two more kisses to her forehead, so innocent and tender it makes her skin tingle.

“Rose Tyler, I don’t want to remember that kiss because it wasn’t really you.”

When he kisses her this time – his lips so indescribably soft, yearning, and pliant against her own – she doesn’t really understand what it means.  If she and the Doctor are now properly _together_  the way Mum and Mickey think they already are.  If it means the Doctor loves her the way she loves him.  

But she kisses him back anyway, with all the love she feels for him in her heart.  And when he gently rolls her onto her back and caresses the side of her face, the length of her arms, the curves of her body with his clever hands, she buries her hands into his hair and tugs, grateful for starry nights and new, happy memories.

**Author's Note:**

> I've written about a dozen short Doctor x Rose one-shots on tumblr over the past few months. Slowly but surely I'm migrating them over here and adding them to this collection. Thanks for reading. :)


End file.
